


There In Spirit

by shewhoguards



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 14:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21138509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: When Christopher asks Mordecai to teach Cat to travel between words, Mordecai suspects there's a motive behind it. He just has to work out what it is.





	There In Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).

“So you want me to teach him to travel between the worlds?” Officially maybe this discussion should have taken place in an office, but they were friends so Christopher and Mordecai walked out in the old garden and prodded the bushes for dangerous parts of left-behind spells. It was a job that officially needed doing, and it afforded privacy without formality. “You realise the first thing he’ll do is go looking for that sister of his?”

“He’ll do that anyway, as soon as he figures out how,” Christopher poked at a flower which almost certainly hadn’t been there the day before and ducked as something fiery whizzed past his ear. A quick word detonated it but.. sometimes he was grateful the garden wouldn’t allow the children to access it. “At least if you’re with him, he might not lose a life doing it.”

“Ha! I wish I could say I had a proven success rate there, but if he’s anything like you were..” The words were jocular but Mordecai’s face was doubting. “How many lives did you say he had left?”

“Three. Four if you count the cat.” Christopher saw him grimace and groaned, anticipating a refusal. “No, listen, he’s not me. He’s not going to go running onto spears or stealing Temple cats for the sheer hell of annoying people.”

“And yet you’re still here asking me to do it, despite the fact that you can still spirit-walk a good ten times better than me when you choose to use your spare life to do it.” Mordecai turned to look at him now, giving him the keen-eyed stare that had been able to see through him since he was a teenager lying about undone homework. “Which means you want to avoid it.” Christopher offered his vaguest, most inscrutable stare. As always with Mordecai it failed to work. “I mean, fair play, you are Chrestomanci, it’s not like you don’t get to delegate jobs you don’t want to do.” The request that he at least be honest about it hung in the air unspoken.

It would have been an easy excuse to use and Christopher busied himself inspecting a small rockery for a moment while he searched for the correct words. They came awkwardly, because some memories are impossible to mention without awkwardness. “How close would you say is a statue to a matchbook?”

It took a second for Mordecai to digest his meaning and stiffen, understanding at last. “Ah.. But this was his magic not--”

“She used his magic, but she had his lives bound up in there. I suspect she only left it behind because she couldn’t work out a way to take it, otherwise things might have gone much worse than they did.” Christopher shook his head. “I don’t care if he goes to see what his sister is doing -- I’d be surprised if he didn’t. I’m worried about what happens if she decides to call for him.”

The words hung in the air, and for a moment they shared the memory, as clear as though it was painted for them, of Mordecai forced flat by those who controlled his soul. And now it was Mordecai who bent his head to examine a patch of harmless-looking buttercups rather than meet Christopher’s eyes. 

“Being owned can become rather a habit if it goes on long enough,” he told the weeds thoughtfully. “I can see your concern.”

“But you didn’t-- afterwards--” It wasn’t a subject they made a habit of discussing, and now the words came stumbling, uncomfortable at the memory. “Or the Dright didn’t try?”

“But that was different,” Mordecai said, as though that much should be obvious. When it became clear it wasn’t he lifted his gaze from the garden’s borders to look Christopher in the face. “That was ownership transferred,” he said, his tone suggesting that this should be more of a reminder than a new revelation.

There had been a lot of periods in the last few weeks where Christopher had been left cursing at his own slowness. Now his expression acquired the tell-tale vagueness as he apparently studied the fountain which meant he was rerunning the whole episode to find out what in the Nine Worlds Mordecai was talking about.

It was a moment which could have been intensely uncomfortable, but Mordecai chose to laugh instead. “Christopher,” he said patiently, in the ‘you idiot’ tone which only those who had become fond of him long before he was Chrestomanci would ever dream of using, “you claimed me as your man. What did you think it meant?”

Christopher shrugged slightly. It might have been difficult to tell he was wrong-footed, unless of course you watched the fountain which suddenly appeared to be running backwards. “I was a child. It was a trick to get past the Dright. Beyond that--”

“Stop that,” Mordecai swatted him lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll upset the fish, and do you really want any of the koi picking this month to become a dragon?” He nodded to himself as the fountain righted itself. “Well. And now you’re an adult and you know that words mean things. And there we are.” He shrugged, dismissing it. “I wouldn’t suggest using quite that trick on the boy though. You don’t need there to be any issues of the legitimacy of the free will of the next Chrestomanci.”

“But--” And now Christopher had cause to review the last few decades in a different light. A thousand episodes of orders too lightly given came to mind and he winced. “Does that mean--”

“Christopher,” And maybe anticipation of that reaction had been, at least subconsciously, why Mordecai had never brought it up. “Have I ever failed to tell you that you were an idiot when you needed it -- which, I might add, you have on any number of occasions.”

“Well, no,” Christopher admitted. His teenage years had certainly required frequent interventions of that nature, and Mordecai had never seemed to hesitate.

“And so now I do what you order -- although certainly not without question, because if you didn’t have people around you questioning you I dread to think what you might attempt.” 

“Well, I might have dealt with young Gwendolen a little more quickly - and terminally - without the rest of you keeping me in check,” Christopher admitted ruefully. “Which is just as well seeing as we didn’t pick up on when she changed.”

“As you say,” Mordecai nodded easily, as though that situation hadn’t nearly led to Christopher’s own death only a couple of days before. “So, I think maybe you don’t have to worry about me slavishly following your orders. And as for the tasks I do for you - who’s to say I wouldn’t do them for Chrestomanci anyway?”

It was a fair point. The castle certainly had plenty of people who would obey Chrestomanci without question, although mostly those tended to be newer and not yet at the stage where his sulks could be brushed off. And Mordecai was, at the end of the day, a government employee performing in his place in the pecking order. Still. “Would you have for Gabriel?”

There was a long pause, and the garden seemed to still waiting for the reply. Mordecai looked down at the buttercups again, considering. If things had been different, if he had started in Gabriel’s service without orders from another world hanging over him.. “No,” he admitted finally. “But -- Gabriel never risked his life to retrieve my soul either. And I rather suspect he wouldn’t have, given the opportunity.” He shrugged a little. “I never expected less than what I got when they caught me eventually, you know that. Double agents.. Well. They don’t get to be anybody’s friend.”

“Except bull-headed kids who don’t have any other friends,” Christopher said dryly. “At least none they don’t hide in wardrobes.”

“Except those.” For a moment they shared a quick smile. “And if you want to talk taking advantage of people, you don’t even want to know how many nights I stayed awake worried I manipulated you into that rescue.”

Christopher snorted. “Fat chance I’d have listened to anyone who told me not to. Including you, as I remember.”

“Exactly my worry,” Mordecai admitted, and he wasn’t smiling any more. “I’d known you since you were hardly old enough to say ‘hippogriff’ properly. It was scarcely fair to let you make the decision.”

It was Christopher’s turn to nudge him out of it. “Stow it,” he advised firmly, as though he was a schoolboy still. “Might have been a kid without the sense to see clearly then, but I certainly can now. If I’d thought you’d used me, you’d know about it by now.”

“Well, there’s that,” Mordecai agreed. “Call it evens then.” Christopher nodded after a slightly grudging moment. “Still leaves you the problem of what to do with the boy though. I’m presuming you hope to retire some day rather than dying in service.”

“It would be nice,” Christopher said. “Although I’m not exactly making a decent stab at that at the present time.” He prodded rather half-heartedly at something small and metallic, as though realising they were meant to be at least appearing to do a job. It exploded damply, showing a similar lack of enthusiasm, leaving a nasty smell behind it. “I see your point, though I’m not sure it can be helped. If I wanted to avoid the appearance of using him as a puppet I probably shouldn’t have taken him into my household.”

That drew a laugh from Mordecai, and it was a moment before he could explain it. “Yes, because you and Gabriel certainly showed that a young Chrestomanci sharing a household with his predecessor feels an obligation to follow all their senior’s wishes..”

“Shut up.” But Christopher was grinning despite himself.

“How many walls did you blow up when he tried telling you what to do again?”

“Not that many; it wasn’t worth having to rebuild them.” Christopher made a face at the memory. “All right, so it isn’t inevitable. But Cat isn’t me.”

“And he isn’t me,” Mordecai pointed out. “I was stuck for years until you decided to come along and rescue me. Cat-- well, as I understand it, he mostly rescued himself.” He glanced sideways at Christopher. “In fact, as I heard it, he rescued you while he was about it.”

“I really hate silver,” Christopher observed ruefully. “But that is mostly correct, though I’m not sure he realises it. It was him taking back his own magic that made the difference in the end.”

“Which is not something I could have contemplated doing from the Dright,” Mordecai said flatly. “Don’t underestimate how much it takes to do that when someone has owned you since birth. If he can do that, you may not have anything to worry about.”

“Perhaps not,” Christopher allowed, but he still didn’t sound certain about it. “Still. I’d prefer he wasn’t alone.”

“Fine. Just don’t expect me to sit him down for an earnest talk of how to be careful around people who used to own you.” Mordecai reached with a stick to carefully unhook an ugly little chain from where it had snagged on a branch. Once moved the ground underneath it rippled and changed from the parched scorched-looking scar it had been to a smooth green grass. Mordecai studied it a moment, remembering. Friendship could be made of many things. He had moved his service from the Dright to being Christopher’s man when there had been nowhere else to go, and Christopher had maybe been too young to understand what he was signing up for at a time when he had risked everything. 

Still, there had been one place where they had managed to remain equals.

“Maybe,” he said, “I’ll teach him cricket.”


End file.
